SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

[goneawaymod]

SHEET CAKE MEETUP

“Who the fuck is Linda?”

The question pops up every few minutes, a little tack of punctuation above the offensively-inoffensive music being piped in*. The room the hires have been ushered into is clearly just a conference room, with a layout that requires either sitting at awkwardly-spaced intervals around a giant table or milling and scooting around the smaller folding table, where the “big surprise” the corporate officers promised them is on display: a sheet cake.

A sheet cake that that still bears HAPPY BIRTH DAY LINDA in blue icing across the top, although someone has, at least, gone to the effort of writing welcome, to the team new hires in Sharpie on a purple flashcard and used a Popsicle stick and tape to plant it like a dismal flag right in the middle of Linda’s “DAY”. Dedication aside, the cake itself looks pretty suspect too, not as if it were poisoned but more like if it were salvaged. The cake part looks dry, and the frosting seems strangely...sweaty. No one’s eating yet, and yet there’s already a piece missing.

However, there’s no lack of enthusiasm around the room. A projector hooked up to a laptop casts an off-center, warped rectangle of WELCOME TO, THE BEST TEAM. NEW HIRES!! onto a wall. The many paper plates have a festive print, although they all seem to be Christmas themed. The table cloth looks as if it came from both 4th of July and potentially a war, given the scuffs and tears. The shot-glass sized paper cups are inadequate to hold a satisfying amount of sparkling cider, but at least they don’t leak. There are many more plastic knives than forks, which could prompt some hires to give in to their animal instincts and just use their hands, or perhaps start a barter economy for the better utensils.

“I’m so jealous,” a corporate employee keeps saying as she ushers hires into the room. “We haven’t had a good party in this office since Kelly’s baby shower, and that little girl practically has teeth now!”

(An eagle-eyed hire may suspect that the box of donuts next to the sheet cake might have come from said baby shower, on account of the fact that the few stale hunks of donut remaining have Pepto-Bismol pink strawberry icing and that there’s still the paper envelope for a gift card with ITS A GIRL written on it.)

Most of corporate slips out after the hires get set up - this is clearly an event for the hires to do some “team building” and work on “rapport” in addition to filling their bellies with cake that tastes remarkably like sand. There’s a karaoke machine in the corner, but hires are instructed not to touch it because, as an employee points out, last year’s Christmas party demonstrated that karaoke is the worst thing in the entire world for morale (“in any world! even before this one got eaten away by the bombs!”).

There’s an additional big glass jar filled with scraps of paper, which the hires are informed are filled with prompts for ice breakers and activities in case the party needs a pick-me-up. Any hire who investigates will find that most of the ice breaker activities start with three benign questions (“what’s your name?” “where are you from?” “what’s your favorite animal?”) and somehow, always a fourth question that feels a little invasive (“what are your feelings on unions?” “under what circumstances would you kill an innocent person?” “do you use the same passwords for all your accounts?”).

“Please enjoy yourselves and all the desserts Jorgmund has generously supplied you with,” one of the employees says on her way out, “and don’t worry about making a mess, janitorial gets paid too much to sit around as is.”

*All music that can be summarized as ’grocerycore’.

Comments

[ahtohollaback]

That makes sense to her. Elsa's seen the general attitude toward "new hires." It's forceful cheer at best and dehumanizing control at worst, and he's right that no one on the rig is being encouraged to treat them any different. It'll take time. It won't be quick or easy. But it's not entirely hopeless. She stops pacing and turns to face him.

"I am angry," she says decisively, fists by her sides. "But you're right. I wasn't thinking about anything but how unfair it was. What they're doing to us is despicable, but it's more important to look for a way out. And to understand what's really happening out there." She glances up and away, meaning outside the rig. "I don't trust anything they're telling us about what that world is like. Not until I see it for myself."

[takenalive]

<Good,> he says approvingly, canting his ears again. They are more mobile than human ears, if less so than the deer ones they resemble. <Anyone can react, but a leader should be capable of questioning, thinking, choosing when and how to act, inasmuch as is possible. You have a point about questioning their story.>

Is Alloran angry? He probably should be. At one point he would have been. What he feels, though, is so much closer to a weary cynicism. He is once again a useful creature.

[ahtohollaback]

"If they're going to use us the way they say they are," Elsa says, gesticulating thoughtfully again, "then they will send us out there. That's when we can get a look around."

She looks at the door, and breathes out a sigh, her shoulders slumping.

"Until then," she says, giving a small, resigned, but not-so-heavy shrug, "all we can do is wait, and try to avoid attention. And the cake," she adds, just comfortable enough to add a touch of levity to the end.

[takenalive]

Alloran nods, human style. There are ways to make use of them that would involve never seeing the sun again, but it would certainly be a waste. He is inclined to believe that this offshoot of humanity has ruined its world and is in, as he was saying earlier, desperate straits.

And he doesn't really have anything more to add on the subject yet, so he readily returns to the more frivolous topic. This conversation is going amazingly. No one's been beheaded or even threatened yet - he still keeps half expecting Esplin to speak up or do something horrible, and it keeps not happening.

<Is it so unpleasant as that? I suppose it's not worth morphing human to try.>

[ahtohollaback]

She's about to say something about how she saw a piece crumble under its icing layer like sandy gravel, but Alloran's next words confuse her.

"'Morphing human'?" she repeats, clearly not sure what's meant, and from the way she pronounces the first word, not familiar with the word morph at all. "I'm sorry. What is that?"

[takenalive]

<A piece of technology. I can acquire the DNA of animals, humans included, and become them for short periods.>: He looks at her for a moment and adds, <'DNA' is the pattern living things carry inside them that tells their bodies how to be shaped and function. I can copy the pattern and use it myself.>

It's probably not the most elegant explanation, but it's certainly delivered neutrally. Alloran has considered if he just doesn't want to morph at all and if he can afford to choose that, Aria aside. He's still thinking.

[ahtohollaback]

"So you can change your shape," she repeats, digesting the information and putting it into a context she understands. "You can become a copy of another living thing."

Has she got it right? She thinks she's got it right. What a strange and wild power to have.

[takenalive]

<Yes, for two hours at a time. It's some effort and highly disquieting to watch, but it's a useful tool. My people traditionally use it for espionage but there are other applications. Don't repeat that part. Just now, only you can hear me.>

Jorgmund knows he can become a human, the first human who came to mind when he realized he'd have to morph, and they know a few things about thought-speech, and they've noticed he has a tailblade. But they're broadly ignorant about everything else he can do, and there's something thrilling about being able to keep that to himself, to dole that information out on his own discretion.

[ahtohollaback]

She nods solemnly, and presses her mouth shut.

"I understand," she says, a neutral enough phrase -- she's not repeating aloud that she's been asked to keep a secret, even though there's no one from Jorgmund around. Alloran's solemnness about it has impressed on her a need for caution.

[takenalive]

He smiles, that subtle movement of the eyes and a bit of the ears. Alloran might look vaguely like he has a jawline but the more familiar with him one is, the more that seems to be coincidence.

<Good. It's a terrible power, but even here I'm not rid of it. And now it's at my discretion. Even the knowledge of it. That is a wonderful thing, Queen Elsa.>

He probably could just call her by her name.

[ahtohollaback]

He must have been a prisoner somewhere. Somewhere worse than this.

"I'm glad," says Elsa quietly. She's still not going to ask, but it is said with sympathy.